EIA: New Energy Act to Yield More Renewable Energy by 2020

March 19, 2008

The U.S. outlook for the growth in renewable energy use by 2020 has
improved considerably in just three months, thanks to the Energy
Independence and Security Act of 2007, which President Bush signed
into law in December. DOE's Energy Information Administration (EIA) is
revising the early release of its Annual Energy Outlook to reflect the
impact of the energy act, and the latest figures show renewable energy
providing 13.7 quadrillion Btu (quads) of energy by 2030, up 12% from
the 12.2 quads that EIA projected back in December. For comparison,
the total U.S. energy use was 99.5 quads in 2006 and is expected to
increase to 118 quads by 2030. That number is 5% lower than the EIA
projected in December (123.8 quads), reflecting the impact of improved
fuel economy standards and new product efficiency standards.

The new projections show biomass energy use increasing to 8.12 quads
by 2030, nearly triple the biomass use in 2006 and a 47% increase over
the December projections, reflecting significant growth in renewable
fuels. But the projections for biomass power production are less
optimistic, increasing by a factor of 7.5 by 2030, compared to a
ninefold increase in the December projections. The difference probably
reflects the need to direct biomass towards fuel production, making
less available for power production. Perhaps in compensation for that,
the projections for geothermal power production are more optimistic in
the revised analysis, showing it more than doubling by 2030, compared
to only an 88.4% increase in the December projections. The other
renewable electricity projections remain essentially the same. See the
Tables A1, A16, and A17 from the EIA report (PDF 164 KB), and
for comparison, see the December 19 article from this newsletter.
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